There’s a sickening pleasure that I associate with reading the crime fiction of James Ellroy. His sentences, all clipped clauses and staccato rhythms, have a feverish, headachy feel, as in this passage from White Jazz: “Lights down. Vibes/drums/ sax/trumpet—go. Themes—loud/fast, soft/slow.” A chapter from American Tabloid opens, “The air conditioner short-circuited and died. Kemper woke up sweaty and congested.” End of paragraph. “He swallowed four Dexedrine. He started building lies immediately.” End of paragraph. The chapter, and the prose, keeps moving: “Kemper mixed a speedball and snorted it. The coke piggybacked the Dexedrine straight to his head.” I’ve never snorted a speedball or swallowed Dexedrine, but I imagine such pharmacological piggybacking makes you feel the way this writing does.
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